Jonah Goldberg Asks A Question

“Western cosmopolitanism”?

There are no Goldberg Variations, only Goldberg Repetitions.

“Goldberg is missing that it is possible to believe things without necessarily wanting to impose those beliefs on others (for reasons of prudence, or principle, or a bit of both). ”

Fair enough. So, getting back to the original post, should homosexuality be decriminalised in every country in the world? If not, why not?

Well, probably Goldberg is overlooking the fact that observers (e.g. you) can readily misparse his fairly quotidian English, viz. he says an objection to the Bush international agenda based not on its content, but solely on its mere existence, seems intellectually inconsistent with a later willingness to advance the “correct” (or any) international agenda — which, obviously, it is — but then you can come along and lose the entire nuance and reduce what he’s said to How can liberal foreign policy types object to Bush’s agenda but favor their own? which would be the statement of a moron.

Goldberg is missing that it is possible to believe things without necessarily wanting to impose those beliefs on others (for reasons of prudence, or principle, or a bit of both).

That would be a reasonable counterargument, had the liberal objections been framed that way, e.g. the Bush agenda is the wrong agenda, or, it might be right in some ways, but for reasons of prudence, or principle blah blah, it should not be advanced with vigor.

But Goldberg’s claim (which we need to assume arguendo to assess the intellectual consistency of his prose) is they did no such thing, that the liberal objects were phrased as a plain moral assetion that it is always — not sometimes, depending on the agenda in question — wrong — not imprudent, sometimes impractical, et cetera — to advance an international agenda at all. So your observation has zip to do with Goldberg’s logical consistency, or awareness of the various arguments one might advance one way or the other.

Your free, of course, to argue that Goldberg’s facts are not in evidence, that in fact liberals did not object to the Bush agenda on universal moral prohibition grounds, but for all the nuanced reasons you suggest. But that wasn’t your argument.

Why do people discuss the giant honking ignoramus J. Goldberg? What’s next, the phenomenology of Tucker Carlson?

PS: I think I would have preferred to rewrite my first sentence as I think this is a unique moment in which Goldberg is, in a limited sense, right. I don’t want to seem to endorse the practice of generalized accusations of hypocrisy, which I denounced later in my comment.

On the other hand, I think that Holbo’s criticism is unfair and there both probably are some individual liberals who are hypocritical in this way and there does seems to be some generalized inconsistency about cultural relativism, which is what Goldberg is certainly aiming for. It’s really low-hanging fruit in terms of opportunities to criticize the contemporary left.

What you’re missing is that you don’t argue seriously with the Jonah Goldbergs of the world, because that simply elevates their status to being your peer. Instead, you mock them, denounce them, or ignore them.

Otherwise, you end up with the likes of Richard Perle or James Dobson, or Jonah Goldberg setting American policy. Which is exactly what happened.

I must say, this is a new new one on me. Can anyone provide an example of someone who was opposed on grounds of strict cultural relativism?

Does it matter? It does if you’re going to engage in Goldberg’s actual argument. But this quote is your response to my criticism of the fact that you didn’t respond to his actual argument. You seem to be saying that since this is a “new one on [you]”, then it was appropriate for you to ignore that this was the basis of his argument and to then conclude that he’s an idiot for not understanding that liberals like some things and not others.

Assuming we are going to engage Goldberg’s actual argument, then I’m more than a little surprised that this is such a startling idea to you, or that Mitchell Rowe never met or heard of anyone who opposed Bush’s policy on cultural relativism grounds.

So, here you go: I’m one. Fundamentally, I don’t think it’s our business to tell other cultures exactly how they should conduct their reproductive lives. I also think it’s an ineffective and counter-productive policy…but although one might have predicted that, we could only know this after-the-fact. Yet, I would have (and did) oppose the policy before it was implemented. Furthermore, before it would have even occurred to me what the probably consequences would be, I’m sure that I opposed the policy on the basis of cultural relativism.

But I support the UN resolution. Does that make me one of Goldberg’s hypocrites? No, because I don’t take cultural/ethical relativism to be a philosophical principle, but rather a commonsensical rule-of-thumb which certainly has exceptions and limits.

So does this disqualify me as an example? Maybe.

More importantly, I certainly have met people who take cultural relativism to be equivalent to ethical relativism and to be a principle. Do I know of any specific examples of anyone like this who opposed Bush’s policy on these grounds? Not that I can recall. But I would be very, very surprised if such people couldn’t be fairly easily found. I’d wager that a past CT thread on Bush’s policy would turn up an example.

At any rate, I think this is all taking Goldberg a little too seriously. If I believed that he was arguing in good-faith, I’d be willing to take it this seriously. But I doubt if, first of all, he’d be persuaded by my argument against accusations of generalized hypocrisy; and, second of all, that he’d be capable of accepting any nuance in this discussion.

And, finally—keeping in mind my argument against the practice of accusing hypocrisy on the basis of generalizations—does it matter if we can find particular examples of people who are hypocrites in this way? There is not a document of principles, including affirmation of strict cultural relativism and support of the UN resolution against homophobia, that one must sign to be a liberal. So some liberals are hypocrites. That doesn’t mean that liberalism itself is hypocritical and invalid. That’s what Goldberg is trying to imply here, and it’s wrong and dishonest.

I would like it if more of we “good guys” were self-aware enough to avoid this tactic, ourselves.

who’s for a godwin’s law variation that extends to cultural relativism?

Jonah Goldberg is a living disproof of Parmenides’ dictum that the void is impossible.

“So, here you go: I’m one. Fundamentally, I don’t think it’s our business to tell other cultures exactly how they should conduct their reproductive lives. I also think it’s an ineffective and counter-productive policy…but although one might have predicted that, we could only know this after-the-fact. Yet, I would have (and did) oppose the policy before it was implemented. Furthermore, before it would have even occurred to me what the probably consequences would be, I’m sure that I opposed the policy on the basis of cultural relativism.”

Keith I am sorry would you mind rephrasing that for me? I don’t quite understand what you are trying to say.
Thanks

Keith I am sorry would you mind rephrasing that for me? I don’t quite understand what you are trying to say.
Thanks

Sincerely?

I’m saying that I opposed Bush’s policy on the basis of cultural relativism. Not on the basis of “strict” cultural relativism, assuming that “strict” means equating it with an, er, absolutist ethical relativism. The rest of it was to answer any objection that the more substantial reason to oppose it is because it is a policy that killed people. I agree, but I am pretty sure that I did (because I would again) oppose it before that happened or that it would occur to me that this would happen. I don’t like the US government telling people of other countries how to manage their reproductive lives. Period.

I don’t understand why this seems to novel to several of you. Yes, once the policy was initiated and talked about and the implications either foreseen or became apparent, then the most urgent reason to oppose it were because it essentially evil in the context of HIV. But I imagine that if you asked someone on the left who is unaware of the Bush admin’s policy, and don’t mention HIV or otherwise hint at the policy’s implications, a lot of people would, without thinking about it much, oppose the policy on the same basis I did. It’s not our business.

Also,

Lets not immediatley revert to strawmen. The policy was ABC.

If you have issues with the funding allocation for each component, well, ok, I would probably agree.

The correct response is Jonah is wrong. Liberals have absolutely no issues with promoting abstinence. We just wish more emphasis was placed on condom promotion.

Not ahh haaa haaa Jonah doesn’t get that you have to have values.

What we are looking for is someone who opposes Bush on grounds of strict cultural relativism but also aggressively pushes other values across cultural lines.

Don’t push abstinence on the grounds of superstitious dogma, you’re going to hurt your citizens. Don’t use gays as a scapegoat on the grounds of superstitious dogma, you’re going to hurt your citizens. I see no contradiction, only an aversion to subsidizing ignorance and brutality.

Those who rely on ignorance and brutality to remain politically viable (3rd world dictators, American Evangelicals, people like Jonah who rely on Evangelicals to keep a predatory elite in power, etc.) quite correctly see attacks on ignorance and brutality as attacks on their political capital. I am enjoying their fear.

Goldberg and people who argue like him may say as a shortcut that it’s bad to confuse intentions with consequences, but that’s not what they mean. They mean liberals argue in favor of new programs like HUD on a basis of their consequences, but in fact new programs never have good consequences, and people who like new programs don’t want good consequences (as these would be defined by a conservative). They mean we should stick with the tried and true because when we make plans and try to arrange the world to our liking, we make things worse.

Sebastian: I knew people in college who claimed to be relativist but were very much against South African apartheid.

As Stanley Fish keeps pointing out (and Rorty before him), relativism does not mean not having convictions. It means recognizing that one’s convictions are not absolute, metaphysical, and presuppositionless but rather are culturally, biologically, temperamentally or otherwise conditioned. That leaves plenty of room for argument and intellectual reconciliation among people who disagree. It merely implies that, whatever “rational” means, it does not and cannot mean “demonstrable to anyone who can reason.”

Kieth “Sincerely?”
Yes sincerely. No offence friend but your prose is a little tangled. Thank you for clarifying.

“on the basis” I typed that comment with both hands too.

As William James pointed out, what a person supports or doesn’t, believes or doesn’t (etc.) depends on their in-born temperament. Individuals draw their lines on the basis of feeling and then (sometimes) seek to rationalize their feelings.

“As William James pointed out, what a person supports or doesn’t, believes or doesn’t (etc.) depends on their in-born temperament. Individuals draw their lines on the basis of feeling and then (sometimes) seek to rationalize their feelings.”

Nope. Some of us actually examine the facts of the situation and conclude, based upon them, what to support, and what to believe. I believe evolution occurs not because of my temperament but because every single fact about life in the natural world supports that proposition. My temperament – how I feel – has nothing to do with it. My ability to read and reason has everything to do with it.

Maybe I’m naive but it’s a procedural problem at heart: how do you “reconcile” two positions (or even propel them into debate or negotiation) when the very concept of “reconciliation” is fundamentally inconsistent with one or both of those positions?

If I try to argue with Pope Benedict while believing that “everyone’s entitled to their point of view,” I lose, because Pope Benedict does not believe that I’m entitled to my point of view, because my point of view is evil (from his standpoint), morally obligating him not just to disagree but to work towards globally expunging the position I’ve taken? My “relativism” may be well-intentioned but it fails to connect with the counterarguments I’ll encounter because it’s rhetorically inconsistent; I’m literally speaking a different language and using different logic. “Reconciliation” is impossible when one side literally believes themselves morally and ethically obligated to convert everyone, everywhere, to their stance.

W/r/t defending (philosophical?) “relativism” from its “vulgar version”:

Everybody who’s not a stone cold realist has to defend the one sort of “relativism” (i.e. that label affixed to them by realists) from the “vulgar” kind. So this theme, under one or another description, is ubiquitous in the literature from that time. Rorty and Putnam, for example, each accuse the other of “relativism” while denying it of themselves.

However, (and I guess this is in response to geo’s question about books in this vein, although of course I don’t know whether this is what Keith is referring to) one influential collection from the time (1982) is M. Hollis/S. Lukes, ed., Rationality and Relativism, w/Barnes & Bloor, Hacking, Gellner, Taylor, Elster, and a few others. Check it out.

Rea: Wouldn’t opposing an “abstinence only” policy because you believe in cultural relativism imply that the policy involved preaching abstinence to a culture that was less inclined to abstinence than the US ?

No, because it’s a reactionary policy. “Abstinence only” means “no condoms,” and condoms are available and are used in France, Sweden, the U.S. etc.

To all those who say, “The Africans are dying of AIDS because they don’t have condoms or sex-education, which are systemic problems we can help them fix,” the “Abstinence-Only” crowd says, “Condoms are evil; end of story” and ignores everything else. As I said above, it’s non-negotiable on the basic rhetorical level for them; the position cannot be argued or reasoned with, only accepted or abandoned.

On the basis of policy, something is being forgotten.

Abstinence education is in accord with the cultures of many non-western countries and therefore is more likely to be effective and less likely to be seen as a western imposition of foreign values.

De-criminalizing homosexuality however is not in accord with the cultures of many non-western countries and therefore is less likely to be effective and more likely to be seen as a western imposition of foreign values.

Thomas@52, quoting Goldberg: liberal foreign-policy types have been telling us how crazy it is to impose “western values” on foreign or otherwise non-western societies

It can’t be said too often that anyone — liberal or conservative — who thinks that the Iraq invasion or any other American military intervention was motivated by a desire to bring democracy and human rights to another country, rather than to achieve a favorable investment climate or strategic advantage, is full of shit.

Strangly enough, Bush II’s Aids package for Africa was not abstinance only:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3887177.stm

“”We’ve more than doubled condom availability during this [Bush] administration, primarily for HIV/Aids,” said Dr E Anne Peterson of the Agency for International Development.

“Before it was a mix of family planning and Aids, but the big increase is for Aids prevention.” ”

I find that Conservatives respond to Sex Education for teenagers exactly the same way Liberals respond to self defense for teenagers. The response is don’t do it.

It can’t be said too often that anyone—liberal or conservative—who thinks that the Iraq invasion or any other American military intervention was motivated by a desire to bring democracy and human rights to another country, rather than to achieve a favorable investment climate or strategic advantage, is full of shit.

It’s pretty clear that Bush personally believed it.

Yes, please, I’d like to know the title.

I lied. I don’t see who I could find the title of that book—I don’t recall the title or the editor, I don’t own it, and I only recall that I read it in 1991. Maybe you could find a book that is explicitly an interdisciplinary defense of relativism written about that time. I don’t have the resources to do so, assuming that it’s not still influential and in print and available at, say, Amazon.

But I do vividly recall the editor’s introduction. She wrote that all the popular arguments against relativism were mostly strawmen, that no one actually proposes the strong form of cultural/ethical relativism that its critics rally against and that the book presents many arguments for relativism from many different disciplines that are much more nuanced and not idiotically unrealistic as the strawman version.

I guess that doesn’t really implicitly validate the claim that the strong version really exists. Er, it explicitly says otherwise.

I said otherwise because I was confusing my context for reading it and what the book said with what the book said, alone. It was absurd to me to claim that no one was making the strong relativistic argument because I was, right at that time and for years prior, meeting people on an almost daily basis who did. But all those people had one thing in common that the writers in the book didn’t share: they were young people, mostly college students. The authors of the book were writing as if the arguments about relativism occurred only in the rarefied atmosphere of academics. My counter-argument to the book was that relativism, like too many other ideas, are appropriated from academia, popularized, and vulgarized and it is in this context that these ideas are argued in civil discourse. It’s not the academics’ fault that people don’t really understand evolution, or chaos theory, or philosophical/cultural/ethical relativism. But when they enter into the popular debate, they need to engage (and debunk) the popular ideas and not pretend that the debate is about the correct, academic versions of these ideas.

It’s entirely possible that someone who deals with relativism as a serious intellectual concept in a rigorous manner belongs to a social group where the vulgar version is never encountered. Those folks will be astonished that anyone would embrace the vulgar version to, say, criticize Bush’s foreign aid policy with regard to birth control.

It’s pretty clear that Bush personally believed it

It’s also perfectly possible that Stalin believed in 1945 that he was rescuing Eastern Europe from a future of capitalist exploitation. The fact remains that if he hadn’t wanted to secure Russia’s borders after several devastating invasions from that direction, as well as to loot those countries to the extent possible, the Soviet occupation wouldn’t have happened.

Look, suppose for the sake of argument that spreading democracy and human rights were the goal of the Iraq invasion. Then: 1) This willingness to sacrifice American blood and treasure for the welfare of others would have to have had some pre-history, particularly in the histories of those who conceived the invasion. Major policies don’t magically appear out of nowhere. And nowhere in the history of American foreign policy — in the Middle East, in Central or South America, in Southeast Asia — is there evidence of self-sacrificing idealism, least of all in the sayings or doings of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, or the other architects of the invasion; and 2) They would presumably have actually have tried to bring democracy and human rights to Iraq once it was occupied. They did nothing of the sort. Instead they immediately dismantled the Iraqi state, including what there was of a social-welfare bureaucracy, and attempted to privatize everything, with extreme privileges for potential US investors. They moved immediately to secure oil facilities and began trying to impose an oil-exploitation agreement on the new and temporary Iraqi government. They immediately began building four large permanent bases as platforms for future military interventions in the Middle East. And they delayed elections continually.

They clearly knew what they wanted, and it clearly had nothing to do with bringing democracy, human rights, or any other Western values to Iraq. That was just a marketing strategy for gullible intellectuals.

Keith M Ellis

“My counter-argument to the book was that relativism, like too many other ideas, are appropriated from academia, popularized, and vulgarized and it is in this context that these ideas are argued in civil discourse. It’s not the academics’ fault that people don’t really understand evolution, or chaos theory, or philosophical/cultural/ethical relativism. But when they enter into the popular debate, they need to engage (and debunk) the popular ideas and not pretend that the debate is about the correct, academic versions of these ideas.”

It’s may not be the academics’ “fault” in the strictest sense. However, it is fair to criticize the academy for not fully confronting the way its various relativisms do indeed effect popular discourse. Especially when those clearly affect the discourse in such a large scale and negative way. Going even further; I would say that many a “sophisticate” uses a vulgar relativism as a cloak & cudgel to attack or defend a myriad of ideas & policy proposals that they privilege.

This seems Mr. Goldberg’s original point.

CJColucci,

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad384.pdf

Almost 17% of US males report 0-1 sexual partner during their lifetime. I think abstinence is a lot more doable than you realize.

You do realize no one is promoting 100% abstinence? That wouldn’t lead us very far.

Almost 68% of males report they have had only one sex partner in the last year.

Again the policy was ABC not AO. There is no reason to think that we have no chance at promoting abstinence to some degree, and that would certainly help.

No, we don’t know how to over turn generations of hostility against homosexuality in this or that corner of the world or we would just do it. Unfortunately it is not quite that easy and abstinence is not quite that impossible.

So, again, why the support for de-criminalizing homosexuality and hostility towards promoting abstinence?

[We really don’t have solid numbers to back either effort, so, it is pointless to go there.]

If you are aware of this why the semi-sarcastic “Sincerely?”

I didn’t intend that to be sarcastic at all. I thought that my serious attempt to explain myself indicated that I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but that I was confused at why he needed clarification. Just because I am aware that my writing can be difficult to parse in general, doesn’t mean that it’s the first thing that occurs to me when someone claims to not understand something I wrote that does seems pretty clear to me. If I were always immediately aware that my writing is difficult, I probably wouldn’t write this way.

Nothing about Bush’s personality is clear.
Nothing about his motivations is clear.
People will admit, publicly, in polite forums like this one, that the threatened assassination of his father could have been a personal motivation. Revenge.
And oil. Those were the mainstream liberal explanations at the time. Not so much anymore. That combo was seen as an acceptable motivation, in the sense of being a reasonable explanation for his moves, however morally unacceptable or politically incompetent.
People will not admit, publicly, in polite forums like this one, that the missiles Saddam hove into Israel during GW1 might have been a motivation for the desire to crush Iraq, and the manipulation of the Bush Administration into waging a crushing war on Iraq. Revenge. And empire.
That combo’s still not quite part of the aboveground dialog. But it flies better than the absurdity of venal sociopaths like Bush/Cheney et al bringing democracy to anyone anywhere.
Goldberg’s relationship with and regard for Israel may just possibly be influencing his thinking and writing on this issue.

John Protevi – ‘I am unaware of a liberal dislike for self-defense education”

In fairness to your question, I recognize that you likely meant only unarmed self defense training. If this is indeed the limit of your question I will concede the point. However, for many self defense training includes fire arm training. This naturally runs afoul of anti-gun groups such as the Brady Campaign. Then there is the philosophical conflicts advocated by the ABC’s of unarmed self defense training, where the final step C includes ideas of “hit first” and “make sure they don’t get up”. Finally, there is the avenue of self defense training that teaches students how to use common items around you as a weapon.

Keith the reason I had a hard time understanding your argument is because it makes no sense. You say that for cultural relativist reasons you were against Bush’s abstinence only no condom program in Africa. The African countries that these programs are operating in our already culturally unfriendly to condoms. In fact i would argue that Bush’s program would be the one supported by a cultural relativist. The local culture is unfriendly to condoms and Bush’s program is not trying to convince them to use condoms.

Mr Loadpants is missing the fact that Bush was not elected President and never had a mandate whereas Obama was both elected and had a mandate. Having abused the democratic process to steal the 2000 election, nothing Bush did could ever be legitimate or valid. So any communications to other countries were automatically invalid.

There is absolutely no hypocrisy in the observation that W. was a total dufus, that everything he did was incompetent or stupid or both and the observation that Obama is not

James, I am unaware of a liberal dislike for self-defense education. Can you provide some evidence? Your claim seems odd, as promoting self-defense education for women was and AFAIK is still a feminist ideal.

I assume that by “self-defense education” he means “guns”.

“It’s entirely possible that the pathological body hatred that infects the later Religions of the Book is not native to, say, Africa and Asia, although it may now be an invasive species in some areas.”

If the cultivation of a “pathological body hatred” helps various cultures halt the spread of a deadly disease, while also discouraging specific behaviors even more likley to spread that disease – for the sake of Africa and Asia, let them be infected with that.

John, I’m not comfortable assuming without a great deal more evidence, that someone is “misdescribing their own moral beliefs by means of these silly slogans”. Or, rather, I think that this describes almost everyone to some extent and so it is unproductive to embrace this assumption except as a last resort because it makes any sort of discourse basically impossible.

On the one hand, I think (as I’ve said elsewhere) that it’s true to some degree that when people’s belief systems are inconsistent, that it implies that they probably don’t believe exactly the things they claim to believe. On the other hand, I think that it’s important to recognize that they believe that they believe these things, and they are usually expressing themselves in earnest.

It’s certainly the case that I’ve heard people expressing a strong relativism in the context of serious and earnest and informed conversations. True, almost always it’s earnest and zealous young people. But those people vote, they’re part of civil society. What they believe matters.

The African countries that these programs are operating in our already culturally unfriendly to condoms. In fact i would argue that Bush’s program would be the one supported by a cultural relativist.

What determines the appropriateness is not whether the colonials find one’s colonialist policies agreeable, it’s that one is colonialist in the first place.

Whether “Africans” (who are not remotely close to being culturally monolithic) like or dislike condoms was of little or no concern to those who formulated and supported the policy. What concerned them was that they dislike condoms and prefer abstinence and they want everyone else around the world to agree with them, whether or not those other folk already do.

Also, if everyone agreed to avoid condoms and embrace abstinence, then there would be little reason for the policy in the first place. It is coercive because it disallows those who would prefer condoms, though a minority, from choosing them over abstinence.

Americans are constantly telling the rest of the world how to live their lives. There is a small number of things where I believe this is appropriate; the rest I believe is not.

“It’s another problem with the hypocrisy accusation: it’s used to attack positions when, in fact, it doesn’t disprove them at all. It’s a form of ad hominem, really, because proving someone is a hypocrite doesn’t prove that they’re wrong, anymore than proving that they’re a bad person proves them wrong.” Keith Ellis

Thank you!! This is very true and frequently overlooked.

Almost 17% of US males report 0-1 sexual partner during their lifetime. I think abstinence is a lot more doable than you realize.

For how many of them was this voluntary?
And for the other 87%, if you know some effective method of promoting abstinence when fear of hell-fire, unwanted pregnancy, parents in the next room, and extreme social sanctions haven’t worked very well over the centuries, let me know. I have nieces and grand-nieces (no daughters, unfortunately) that I’m concerned about.

Keith: What I am saying is if you are going to be involved at all in fighting AIDS in Africa, the position closer to relativism is the abstinence approach. So as a relativist it would be illogical to oppose such an approach. It can be opposed as being ineffectual but that is a different argument.

Keith: What I am saying is if you are going to be involved at all in fighting AIDS in Africa, the position closer to relativism is the abstinence approach. So as a relativist it would be illogical to oppose such an approach.

I understand that. But I think you’re wrong in your assumption of what relativism is. It is not dependent upon whether the other culture agrees or disagrees with an imposed ethical principle upon a particular practice. The second culture may approve of the practice on completely different ethical grounds than the first. The point is that the imposition itself is wrong or inappropriate, not whether the result is agreeable to the target culture. In practice, sure, most relativists don’t oppose practices that the target culture finds agreeable. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t—to be consistent with their beliefs, they should.

John, while my very long comment is in moderation (I did a lot of rewriting and cutting and so I’m not sure that I could have shortened and still address all of the things I wished—but there’s several typos I wished I had caught; some missing negatives) I’d like to ask you your age. I’ve had the impression we’re not too far apart and you are older than most of the rest of the CT contributers. I’m 43.

I’m not unfamiliar with political philosophy and history (I attended St. John’s College, after all), but my viewpoint is of my practical experience and my use of language is common, not technical. There’s big differences, for example, between ethical, cultural, and philosophical relativism; but I don’t address those in my comments and somewhat conflate them…because they are conflated in popular culture.

I ask about your age because I’m really beginning to think that a lot of this relativism stuff is specific to a certain time and context. Say, the eighties to the early nineties among college students and similar. I’ve been engaged with people constantly since then about these sorts of issues, but my experience of these engagements and my assumptions may have been colored by my past and I may have assumed a lot more contemporary relativism than actually exists. I’m not sure.

I don’t have much to say about your point about liberalism being a theory of jurisdictions and self-determination. I certainly agree with this; but I don’t think it’s illuminating in this context because throughout liberalism’s history, the question of the boundaries of these jurisdictions and self-determination has been constantly in dispute. If you could convincingly say—and I don’t think you can—liberalism has always, or at least presently, define(s/d) the boundaries of jurisdiction at nations or large cultures, then I’d agree this argument was relevant. But it doesn’t, so it isn’t.

They are somehow committed to it. And you are agreeing with Goldberg. So the question is: why?

Am I agreeing with Goldberg? I think that any strong relativists out there should be committed to it if they claim they are.

Vulgar and what I’m calling “strong” relativism conflates moral and cultural relativism in a somewhat natural, but not necessary, way. That is to say, it takes the principle of moral relativism to do away with an universal right or wrong, and then using cultural relativism, it limits the the making of moral judgments to within one’s own culture because, per cultural relativism, that is the context within which a morality is defined.

It’s not a necessary combination because one need not do away with absolute morality and still allow cultural relativism (for example, there could be an underlying absolutism which is expressed, and only properly understood, within individual cultural contexts) and if one does away with absolute morality, one need not see the cultural as being the appropriate context for morality.

Nevertheless, it is a natural combination for a variety of reasons, historically, philosophically, and psychologically. If one does away with absolute morality, then one has the problem that there obviously exists in practice relative morality—and then struggles to discover the correct “jurisdictional” boundaries of this relative morality. Individual persons seems excessive, impractical, and contrary to experience; national boundaries too arbitrary; cities or smaller communities also contrary to experience and also probably impractical. Culture seems like a good choice.

I think discussion of my own so-called “weak” relativism is an unnecessary digression here because Goldberg isn’t acknowledging this form, explicitly or implicitly; and I’d wager there are more “strong” relativists on the left, and more liberal moralists as you describe, than there are “weak” relativists like myself.

I can’t say if I coined the term, or I appropriate it, or someone else coined it as I use it. I self-describe this way because I subscribe to something that is, depending upon how you view it, either a limited absolute morality or an expanded relative morality. Firstly, I deny absolute morality outright. However, I think that morality naturally arises within the context of intelligent, social beings. I strongly suspect that all such moralities will share some things in common; however, at present, the only such context we have is the human context. Therefore, I think there is something that is, for practical purposes, an absolute morality within the human context.

But wait! Like absolute geometry (just Euclid’s first three postulates), this morality is extremely limited in scope. It applies to only a few things. Most of the rest of what we commonly think of as morality and ethics are, in my opinion, relative on a smaller scale and…wait for it!…that scale is usually cultural. Therefore, there’s a few moral ideas which transcend the cultural context, but most arise and are only understood within it. And, not coincidentally, it is not only inappropriate, but a category error to impose most of those cultural values onto another.

I call this “weak” relativism because within the human context—which is, after all, the only context within which most of us are applying moral principles—my view would be inaccurate were it described as moral relativism. I oppose murder, species-wide, for example. It’s relativism, though, because I believe the vast majority of values are culturally-determined and I, in principle oppose the imposition of any such values by one culture onto another. It’s also relativism and not, say, “weak absolutism” partly as signaling mechanism (I prefer to affiliate with relativists than absolutists) and in the deepest philosophical sense because I am, strictly speaking, a moral relativist, not believing in a universal morality.

And now I can answer your question:

How does your ‘weak relativism’ differ?

Obviously, liberalism as you describe is not what I describe above, even in a weakened form. There are different philosophical principles involved in my “relativist” morality than in your “liberal” morality. As you describe it, it’s based upon individual liberty, self-determination, tolerance, a “theory of jurisdictions”. My “weak” relativism shares with “strong” relativism the governing principles of moral relativism in conjunction with cultural relativism.

Now, again, exactly how many people are strong relativists, I don’t know. Neither do I know how many of those are consistent about it. But I’ve met lots of people who claim to be strong relativists and it really is true that in real life, interventionist foreign policies (among other things) are condemned on a strong (and weak, but that’s only of concern because Goldberg probably cannot differentiate the two…not to mention distinguishing these from simple liberal values, as you describe) relativist basis.

Your response to Goldberg is wrong because you’re just denying that anything other than plain old liberalism actually exists. Not only is that untrue, it’s disrespectful of all the people on the left whose politics are not the liberalism you describe. Many people go beyond the liberal tolerance as you describe as “feel[ing] obliged to tolerate something that you disapprove of”. For them, there are strong boundaries beyond which you cannot even disapprove of something you otherwise would.

The reasons that progressives are more drawn to relativism than liberals are is because liberal tolerance is mushy and unclearly principled and prone to be discarded as soon as it is inconvenient or passions flare. Progressives prefer a deeply principled tolerance that isn’t merely tolerating what you disapprove of, but doing away with the disapproval or judging entirely. They have good reasons for this. It’s because they have strong notions of justice and equality such that they apply them more strictly where liberals have erred. Liberals support invasions of Iraq, progressives don’t. A liberal’s tolerance can be overwhelmed by his anger or his compassion or, some will say, his pocketbook. Progressives embrace relativism, especially the strong form, because it is inviolate. They believe it will avoid the errors of the past (and present) and, anyway, it’s true.

Sure, in practice many of them are hypocrites and are willing to, say, agitate against Innuit seal hunting or for Muslim tolerance of homosexuals. Does this mean they are not really relativists? Only if when a liberal’s tolerance runs out means that they are no longer a liberal. Or for that matter, when a contemporary American conservative supports large government in the form of enormous military budgets, they’re not really conservatives. People aren’t consistent.

As better minds than mine have argued, truly consistent people tend to be monsters. (I take that as a worrying indictment of myself, as my lifelong passion has been to be rationally consistent.) A truly consistent relativist would turn a blind eye to monstrosity, perhaps making them monsters, as well. This is why most people who claim to be strong relativists have limits. And others use their contradictions in a self-serving way.

I think Goldberg (wrongly) equated relativism with liberalism.

The funny thing about very consistent relativists is that their belief system leads to the logical possibility that a culture will arise that shares the belief “relativists are all obnoxious jerks whom it’s not worth giving the time of day.”

Keith: If that is the case you should be against ANY involvement of the United States, or any other country, in fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Is that the case?

As someone who has worked on US-government sponsored family planning and anti-AIDS programs in foreign countries, I’d like to say that we don’t just go into a country and impose our US or personal standards. We go in with the consent and/or at the invitation of the local government and work closely with them. The programs are designed to solve a problem (high abortion rates, HIV-AIDS) in a way that is culturally acceptable. So approaches and materials for, say, India are entirely different than approaches and programs in Romania or Egypt or Brazil. The Bush administration changed that by mandating ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Use a Condom). There is, at first glance, nothing wrong with that, since, in fact, for reproductive health your best bet is to abstain, and if you can’t do that, you second best bet is to be faithful to one partner who is disease-free, and if you can’t do that, your third best bet is to use a condom. The problem is that for most cultures with big problems (STIs, HIV, high teen pregnancy rates), A and B are not on the table. So the programs spend billions of dollars urging behavior that is not going to happen. Then the Bush administration “tweaked” the data to make it seem like ABC was working. The best example of this is Uganda, where in fact HIV decreased. But then it turned out that HIV prevalence was down NOT because more people were abstaining or being faithful. Research showed that they weren’t. The prevalence was down mostly because so many people with HIV had died that there were less infected people to infect others, and because there was an increase in condom use. If the researchers and program designers had been left alone, they would have concentrated on encouraging condom use and perhaps saved more lives.

What he’s missing is that abstinence is a very narrow policy prescription with a definition that defies ambiguity, while “Western cosmopolitanism” is quite a broad concept susceptible to undeserved negative characterization. The “c” word is a loaded term on both the left and right.

@ Fitz
Check out just about every other reputable program working against AIDS in Africa and you’ll see research in direct contradiction. Condom use promotion programs, when culturally acceptable and widespread, show success rates. If they are saddled with ABC, if they are underfunded, if there are not condoms freely available and affordable — then they are not successful.

It’s a strange interview in my view. Research has shown that abstinence and being faithful didn’t work in Uganda, but yet he cites their success, as if he hadn’t seen the more recent, non-Bush research. Plus, there are a lot of countries in Africa (duh), with different cultures, different problems, vastly different levels of government support for HIV-AIDS programs. It seems extremely irresponsible to lump them all together. There is also a distinction between buying condoms and using them, and using them “right.” So he’s sort of right that just because condom sales go up, it doesn’t mean that HIV prevelance goes down. But that doesn’t mean that promoting condom use is a faulty approach.

Sounds like Dr. Green is well studied on the latest research and has a good grasp of what human societies are capable of.

One problem he has encountered and will continue to encounter is evident in his interview. The sexual politics of the west gets many otherwise capable minds to deny the most effective and enduring means of preventing the spread of disease. That is: personal behavior and self control.